The
invasion and occupation of Iraq has served as a spotlight, showing up
the false propaganda of capitalist politicians who argued for the war,
on such blatantly spurious pretexts.

George
W Bush and Tony Blair both asserted, over and over again, that Iraq definitely
had Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). Now, in January 2005, even the
US Iraq Survey Group has quietly been closed down, with nothing to show
for its efforts.

Blair's
statements ranged from the downright positive: "I have no doubt
that they will find the clearest possible evidence of Saddam's weapons
of mass destruction" (4 June 2003), to a craftily modified version:
"I have absolutely no doubt at all that we will find evidence
of weapons of mass destruction programmes" ( 8 July 2003), to
a pass-the-buck, get-me-out-of-this, version - "I can only tell
you I believed the intelligence we had at the time" (25 January
2004).
Rory Bremner, John Bird and John Fortune,
YOU ARE HERE - A DOSSIER, 2004, pp66-67.

It
is hardly surprising that now, in 2005, even his colleague, Gordon Brown,
is quoted as saying to Blair: "There is nothing that you could
say to me now that I could ever believe". So, when "Trust
me, I'm Tony!" appeals for working-class votes in the General
Election, workers should bear this interesting character-reference in
mind. Like "tricky Dicky" Nixon, the question comes to
mind: who would buy a used car for this man? But then which of us would
trust any capitalist politician?

That
pretext for invading Iraq, linking the Iraq regime both to the mythical
WMD and the Twin Towers attack (the 9/11 event), as a terrifying threat,
was a Big Lie. No opportunity was missed by Bush to press home his claim
that Saddam Hussein was behind this horrific event. The
fact that Iraq was a secular state, opposed to religious fundamentalism,
was disregarded. Since many Americans, it seems, are ignorant of the Middle
East, they bought this - hook, line and sinker.

The
campaigns of Bush and Blair in the lead up to the war were examples
of the technique, previously pioneered (or at least made famous by)
the National Socialists in Germeany: this was the so-called Big Lie.
Propagandists of the Big Lie held that, as long as you said a thing
enough times, and loudly enough - no matter how preposterous it was
- people would believe it.

...
I don't see that there is much difference between what Bush and Blair
did this last time around with Iraq (and what George Bush and Margaret
Thatcher did on the first occasions) and what the National Socialists
did in the lead up to World War II.

Stephen Pelletiere, IRAQ AND THE INTERNATIONAL OIL SYSTEM - WHY AMERICA
WENT TO WAR IN THE GULF,Washington, 2nd ed. 2004, p240

Likewise,
Messrs Bremner, Bird and Fortune:

Regime
change was obvious but the legality was questionable...There was really
only one thing that pressed all the buttons: weapons of mass destruction.
If Saddam had them, he would pose a clear and immediate threat... And
it was easy to sell to the public. A madman with a big bomb is easy
to sell.

They
also quoted Herman Goering on this subject:

Voice
or no voice, the people can always be brought to do the bidding of the
leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being
attacked and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing
the country to danger: it works the same in any country ( Nuremberg,
1946).
YOU ARE HERE, pp64-65

Manipulation
of public opinion is something the US and British governments, and their
mass media, are remarkably effective at doing. Noam Chomsky noted how
Saddam Hussein became suddenly demonised in 1990, having been supported
throughout the 1980s, with arms sales and financial credits, by the US,
British and other 'allied' governments:

By
any standards, Saddamn Hussein is a monstrous figure... But his villainy
is not the reason for his assumption of the role of the Great Satan
in August 1990. It was apparent long before, and did not impede Washington's
efforts to lend him aid and support... Hussein became a demon in the
usual fashion: when it was finally understood, beyond any doubt, that
his independent nationalism threatened US interests.
Chomsky, DETERRING DEMOCRACY, 1992, pp210-1

Stephen
Pelletiere, formerly the CIA's senior political analyst on Iraq throughout
the Iran-Iraq war, argues that, whatever the rhetoric, the war is actually
about control of Middle East oil reserves, and beyond that, future world
dominance:

America
wants the oil; that, we can take as a given. But it did not go to war
because it thought that was the only way it could get it. America, the
world's financial power house, always has ways of getting what it wants,
outside of actually declaring itself to be at war with anyone. What
the United States really wants is to hang on to its role of world hegemon,
and it can't do that if it does not control the oil of the Persian Gulf...
... The book concludes that America's occupation of Iraq is a bid to
recoup what the oil companies lost when they were forced to disgorge
in 1973; that is, control over the world oil industry and beyond that
control of the global economy.
Pelletiere, op.cit., p9

Before
and especially since the 1973 OPEC 'revolution', the US oil industry had
become ever more closely linked with the State Department, and both were
involved with the huge - and growing - US military-industrial complex.

[The
US] has set itself up as the area's protector, claiming to be disinterestedly
keeping the Gulf open to replenish the oil suplies of the Free World.
At the same time, however, Americans got themselves involved in a circular
trading relationship with the Gulf monarchs, buying oil with dollars
and then selling the sheikhs arms, for which the sheikhs would return
the cash in the form of petro dollars.

Pelletiere, op. cit., p238

This
profitable and powerful trading pattern - with oil-rich Gulf states regularly
buying quantities of arms from arms-rich America (and her Little Brother,
Britain) - went well, especially for the US arms firms, until soon after
the end of the Cold War, when in 1996 the Gulf states reached saturation
point with arms buying. World oil prices had fallen, partly due to recessions
in the US, Europe, Japan, and South-East Asia. Only if the price of oil
was raised, the Gulf monarchs said, could they continue to go on buying,
as before, from the US arms manufacturers.

Clearly,
to save the bacon of the vast US military-industrial complex, it was essential
to raise the price of oil and fast. Hence the need for the US to have
a war - against someone: Iraq was only one of several candidates for the
privilege (Iran and North Korea were also mentioned). Hence too the implausible
pretexts given for attacking Iraq.

Pelletiere
argues that :

[The
neo-cons] created a climate of opinion in the United States (and to
a degree outside of it as well) that made the Iraqis appear to be a
menace, who would, with their suppositous weapons of mass destruction
bring destruction on the Free World. All lies, to be sure, but effectively
disseminated...
But did the neo-cons do this all on their own?...
Behind them... supplying the necessary muscle, is the military/industrial
complex. All of the major defense contractors, who, with their hefty
donations, subsidize the conservative think tanks, and contribute to
candidates to the Congress and for the Presidency - these are the real
movers and shakers, so to speak.
... The neo-cons did not lead America into the morass of the Gulf.
America is in the Gulf, militarily, because the military/industrial
complex required it, in order to live in the style to which it (the
complex, that is) had become accustomed (op. cit., p238).

It
is easy enough to point out the lying propaganda and double standards
of capitalist politicians. More important for us as Socialists is to expose
the real, economic and strategic, interests involved - capitalist interests,
not working-class interests, as in all of capitalism's wars.

Given
the huge cost of this war (estimated at $4-5bn a month and rising), the
possibility that US occupation forces may need to be stationed permanently
in Iraq, the fact that the Pentagon's already huge budget of $400bn is
already being recalculated, upwards (THE INDEPENDENT, 8 Jan. 2005), plus
the possibility of the need to reintroduce the draft, the question is
already being raised, even by those who supported the war, as to who can
possibly be benefitting from it.

Within
Iraq, reconstruction contracts have been granted to approved US businesses,
in an uncompetitive and exclusive way. Moreover, Iraqi business assets
are being privatised - i.e. taken over by US companies. All of which leaves
a stench of corruption, and, worse, war-profiteering. (War-profiteering
is a an old tradition in the United States.) That many of the companies
favoured with these very special contracts have board members who are
closely linked to Bush and the Republican Party is hardly coincidental.

Top
of these favoured companies is Halliburton: its former chief executive,
Dick Cheney, is Bush's Vice-President, and its customers have included
Saddam Hussein, Libya's Colonel.Gaddafi, and Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khomenei.
Next on the list is Bechtel: among its senior board members are George
Shultz ( ex-Secretary of State), Jack Sheehan (a member of the Defense
Policy Board), Caspar Weinberger (former Defense Secretary) - all of them
men with political pull. Back in 1983, Bechtel was planning a pipeline
from Iraq to Jordan: conveniently Donald Rumsfeld was in Baghdad on a
peace (!) mission, so he chatted to Saddam about Bechtel's pipeline, and
reported back to Bechtel's Mr Shultz - at that time Secretary of State
(see Bremner, Bird and Fortune, op.cit., re"The Oiligarchy",
pp. 76-80).

Clearly,
with the current increased price of oil, partly due to Iraq being out
of the equation, and partly due to huge uncertainty, the other oil-exporting
states stand to benefit. They should now be able to resume buying arms
from the US, especially as the dollar has depreciated. But the US is a
huge importer of oil. This means there is a conflict of interests between
the 'military/industrial complex' section of the US capitalist class,
on the one hand, and those capitalist industries and companies for whom
the price of imported oil is a cost, whether in terms of an essential
raw material, or as fuel for energy or for transport. Moreover with the
dollar falling, they find it harder to export.
But no matter the costs, in corruption, in loss of lives, in environmental
pollution, in loss of legitimacy, whatever: those who run the US governments
have, for the last half-century at least, been governed by the 1945 dictum
of the State Department. The Middle East, because of its huge quantities
of oil, was "a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of
the greatest material prizes in world history"(quoted by Chomsky,
1999, in IRAQ UNDER SIEGE - THE DEADLY IMPACT OF SANSTIONS AND WAR, ed.
Anthony Arnove, 2000, p53).

Moreover,
while in 1945 the US had global dominance as a producer and distributor
of oil, and by use of conditions attached to Marshall Aid could direct
European states to switch from coal to imported oil, paid for in dollars,
thus eliminating sterling as a world currency, this is no longer the situation.

The
United States is heavily dependent now on imported oil: "already
a little over half its daily consumption of 20 million barrels is imported"
(ASPECTS OF INDIA'S ECONOMY, nos 33 and 34, Dec. 2002).

The
US Department of Energy and the International Energy Agency both project
that global oil demand could grow from the current 77 million barrels
a day (mbd) to 120 mbd in 20 years... The agencies assume that most
of the energy required to meet this demand must come from OPEC, whose
production is expected to jump from 28 mbd in 1998 to 60 mbd in 2020.
Virtually all of this increase would come from the Middle East, especially
Saudi Arabia... 63 per cent of the world's proven oil reserves are in
the Middle East, 25 per cent (or 261 billion barrels) in Saudi Arabia
alone... no other economy rivals that of the United States for the growth
of its oil imports... The United States increase in imports accounts
for more than a third of the total increase in oil trade and more than
half of the total increase in OPEC's production during the 1990s. This
fact, together with the fall in US oil production, means that the US
will remain the single most important force in the oil market.

Such
are some of the economic facts. Hence the "battle for energy dominance".
In addition, the US has military forces and bases in well over 100 countries
worldwide, especially in recent times in the new oil-producing states
of Central Asia - the 'stans'-, and in addition is not averse to using
oil as a weapon, just as it has in the past used food aid as a weapon.

Just
as a hundred years ago the British used their military forces to stitch
up supplies of oil and so guarantee their naval dominance, so nowadays
the United States. In 'liberated' Iraq there will be permanent US forces
and political advisors, just to make doubly sure that oil supplies are
going to go to Uncle Sam, at a suitable price, and that foreign companies
will be largely excluded from 'Operation Freedom'.

The tragedy of this is that working class men and women are caught up
in a quarrel over which section of the capitalist class is to profit from
this black gold, and that the working class are supposed to take sides
in such a quarrel. We, Socialists, repeat, yet again, there are no working
class interests at stake in such capitalist turf wars. The working class
own no oil-fields or pipelines: the only oil we get to see and use is
that which we have to pay for, not that which the capitalists profit from.

The
solution is Socialism - a world where the oil-fields, like the cornfields,
will be owned and democratically controlled in common by the whole community,
that is, by all of humanity. But that is only possible when the working
class recognises that capitalism is against our interest as a class, and
organises itself, democratically, politically, as "a class in
and for itself" to put an end to production for profit and the
wage-slave system.